Financial Times: Kenya graft in spotlight

The leak of a secret report into high-level corruption has given Kenyans a pointed reminder of the graft associated with the government of former President Daniel arap Moi, days after he emerged from the political shadows to back his successor, Mwai Kibaki, for re-election.

The 110-page report, produced for the Kibaki administration by the corporate security group Kroll, details a web of bank accounts, dummy trusts and front men allegedly used by relatives and associates of Mr Moi to handle the proceeds of corrupt deals.

The report had been kept under wraps for three years, but a version surfaced this week on the WikiLeaks website, soon after Mr Moi gave a rare press conference to throw his weight behind Mr Kibaki’s bid for a second five-year term in a presidential poll due in December.

Mr Kibaki swept to power on an anti-corruption ticket at the end of 2002, beating Uhuru Kenyatta, a Moi protégé. Mr Moi’s regime was widely despised by Kenyans after 24 years in power.

To some analysts, Mr Kibaki’s increasingly close association with his predecessor has underlined his perceived failure to live up to promises to replace corruption and ethnic favouritism with a fairer and more inclusive form of government.

The report claims Mr Moi’s sons, Gideon and Philip, are worth £550m ($1.1bn, €785m) and £382m respectively and own properties and stakes in companies around the world. It says there was a “flurry of activity” in Mr Moi’s inner circle after the 2002 election to prevent any possibility of losing wealth to the new government. “The family was . . . advised to use proven trusts that are experienced at hiding pursued assets among selected jurisdictions with relaxed money laundering policies,” it says.

Alfred Mutua, a government spokesman, said the Kroll report was incomplete, inaccurate and a “political gimmick”, according to reports. “We did not find [it] was credible. It was based on a lot of hearsay,” he said. Calls to the office of Mr Moi’s spokesman were not answered last night.

The document on the WikiLeaks website, which was first publicised in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, contains irregularities such as missing pages, page numbers and sections of text.

The highest-profile case of grand corruption in the Moi era related to Goldenberg International, a company created at the turn of the 1990s, allegedly as a front to plunder the public purse.

Anti-corruption officials appointed by Mr Kibaki had previously estimated there were between $3bn (£1.5bn, €2.2bn) and $4bn of ill-gotten gains relating to Goldenberg.

The Kibaki administration employed Kroll in 2003 to locate funds siphoned out of the country. A Kroll spokeswoman said the group could not confirm or deny the authenticity of the report, which is dated April 27 2004, or answer questions on it.

In 2004 the government was six months late in paying fees to Kroll, endangering the investigation.